Speaking of Rolex hate, this would be so much more beautiful if the company hadn't decided to turn the dial into a novel. Seriously, eight lines of text? Why ruin a perfectly lovely and clean design by printing all the specs on the face?

Speaking of Rolex hate, this would be so much more beautiful if the company hadn't decided to turn the dial into a novel. Seriously, eight lines of text? Why ruin a perfectly lovely and clean design by printing all the specs on the face?

No shit, I have been watching this closely, and man, Dino, you have absolutely crushed it. If this isn't considered TWAT Master material, I don't know what is. Thank you for cleaning up the thread.

Hi Nuke,

Thanks for your kind words. Glad you appreciated my post. Not sure where some of the newbies are getting their ideas, but some seemed more hate based rather than fact based. Have a great 4th!

Best regards,
Dino

Quote:

Originally Posted by SixOhNine

Speaking of Rolex hate, this would be so much more beautiful if the company hadn't decided to turn the dial into a novel. Seriously, eight lines of text? Why ruin a perfectly lovely and clean design by printing all the specs on the face?

Speaking of Rolex hate, this would be so much more beautiful if the company hadn't decided to turn the dial into a novel. Seriously, eight lines of text? Why ruin a perfectly lovely and clean design by printing all the specs on the face?

And on a more US-centric note, happy 4th of July! Can there be anything more American than eating high calorie carb-laden food in suburbia and spending the afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese? Hard to think of counterexamples.

From my left calf, Quoddy boat mocs and Nautilus to you and yours, have a great 4th!

Thing is, we all know who we should really blame for all the Rolex hate:

Fleming's Bond was one of the first literary characters that identified himself via the brands he consumed. And one of those brands was Rolex. We wouldn't know what kind of Rolex bond or until the movies came around, but we always knew he wore a Rolex.

Fleming probably chose Rolex for two reasons: one the fact that Wilsdorf had set up a program to sell watches on credit to British POWs; and secondly because Rolex, despite being based in Switzerland, is a quintessentially British brand.

As the Bond character became immensely popular in the 1960s and 1970s, we see increased demand for the Rolex brand, and Rolex responds by raising its prices. Combined the aggressive marketing transition to the modern luxury sector along with Rolex production methods, and you have one of the first truly mass luxury items. As such, for many the intrinsic technical appeal of Rolex products became beside the point. People really wanted the watch that the movie stars wear, this of course is especially true of males.

And so this is how the first truly successful diving watch ends up becoming the ubiquitous badge of the upwardly mobile middle manager. It is technically beautiful, but has also become a cliché. And yet we still love it.

And Rolexes most recent design turns seem to acknowledge this, with the introduction of more, shall we say, "obvious" designs, with polished center link bracelets even for steel, and so on. With Rolex's more recent models there seems to be a realization that that went too far.

Meanwhile, we are left with the dilemma of what to wear today: do we go with the classic or the state-of-the-art?

One interesting thing for me in the past few pages was the question of who invented the waterproof watch. Just saw something on Hodinkee that seemed a nice summary of Rolex's role:

Quote:

In 1926, the Oyster case became the very first waterproof wristwatch case to be produced serially and it was also the first fully-integrated waterproof case overall. Previously, any waterproof cases were tedious affairs that involved an outer case being snapped over the main case.

Asked my dad to bring his watches. He brought the ones he thought is be interested in wearing. Normally I'll borrow his Omega for a few months then trade out for something else. Just gotta pick what to swap out this time…